I'm picky about who I sideline on this damn blog. I gotta have a FEEL for the blog, It's gotta MOVE me. This one looks damn promising...it intrigues me, so I'm gonna be watching it. This gal strikes me as pretty radical and besides, she doesn't seem to like men and that alone ALWAYS gets my attention. Her site is affectionately called: JUST BITE ME!

I wear a flyfishing hat with that aphorism emblazoned on the front.

God, I love it.

So!!! The latest news on the Jeeemeister front is my total immersion into the world of Yerba Mate. As you all know, Eve, my African princess, turned me on to the popular South AMERICAN ......NOT South AFRICAN...... pastime of Bombilla sipping the strangely exotic Yerba from a Mate gourd.

Well, traditionally for me, I tend to take new experiences to untested and wonderfully exotic levels of obsessive-compulsiveness. In following through with this tradition, I ordered three gourds (some of them rather ornate and relatively expensive), two bombillas (one with an Argentine seal and one gold-plated one), a kettle and not one, not two, not three but FOUR packages of Yerba.

Packages?

In the U.S. we are not on the metric system. In the rest of the world, a kilo is the standard dry weight measure. These packages are LARGE. Two of them are a kilo or 1000 grams. Equal to 2.2 pounds U.S., for all my North American readers. The other two are slightly smaller, at only 500 grams.

Doesn't mean anything to you, you say? Well, perhaps my PC to PC conversation with Eve tonight will ring true......

Eve says, "Oh my God! One kilo package will last me six months!"

So, Eve and I figure I am good for at least three years or more.

The thing is, I took a gourd, bombilla and a 500 gram package of Yerba into work today and decided to give it a try. Everybody said, "What the hell are you smoking?" as the apparatus tends to resemble a bong of sorts to the folks I work with.....that's what you get when you work with a bunch of ex-drug addicts.

The folks who tried it, myself included, all ended up making an awful face and commenting, "Yuck! It's bitter!"

Great.

So now I'm stuck with three years worth of bitter Yerba Mate. Knowing me, I will FORCE myself to like it and acquire a taste for it. Eve tells me that I will only gain from this experience and to forge ahead! Given her latest accomplishments in life, I have very little doubt in my mind!

-Jeeem-

SUMMER LUST

Got your attention again didn't I?

I am having an affair.




















The "affair" is with a Creative™ NOMAD Jukebox C mp3 player.

Herein lies another dilemma....

I don't ever read the instruction booklet so it may be a while before I return.

It's a guy thing

-Jeeem-

ANOTHER ROBBERY

Well, who woulda guessed? I go to pick up my laundry today and Bristol Laundromat has been robbed. This is one for the record books. Doesn't look like a (hee, hee) professional job though. Talked to Joyce when I picked up my laundry and she says,

"Did you see the door?"

I said I hadn't and went to go look. Appears as if somebody put their fist right through the glass.

"We've been robbed," Joyce says, adding "We know who it is."

Ever seen that show about the WORLDS STUPIDEST CRIMINALS or something to that effect? Well this one would qualify. Seems the culprit(s) were interrupted in their crime by the newspaper delivery man and off they went......

Leaving a trail of quarters to their hideout.

DUH!

-Jeeem-

ALERT!

Got your attention didn't I? Just wanted to let all my visitors to this site know that I have added a link up above, "SIGN MY DAMN GUESTMAP!!" or something like that. Shirl created a monster when she introduced me to the simplicity of HTML some two or three months ago. Now I'm an HTML'ing fool.

News on the Jeeem front:

Something crawled up inside my cat and died.

It's awful. The windows are open and the ceiling fan is whirling. I just got back from Cricenti's and have purchased Air Freshener. It's enough to gag a maggot. Yuck. Damn animal. I musta done something wrong and she's getting back at me. I swear I heard her laughing just a second ago.

Bill, the guy from the West, who has raped the forest across the street from me, remains a mystery. Word about the neighborhood has it that he was locked up for a few days in town and has a restraining order placed on him. I don't know the details but I'll continue to keep my ear to the gossip channel grapevine in town. He hasn't been back to do anymore raping except to occasionally drive by late in the evening....a suspicious act.

Poor numby Bill. He obviously does not understand that New Englanders handle things differently. I warned him of that when I first met him (having built a log cabin not far from here) but it appears he decided to do things here like they do out West. A mistake in New England. Word has it that a "Cease and Desist" order has been placed on him. Kinda reminds me of the old Western movies when they run somebody out of town.

A terrible outbreak of Yard Sales is occurring in the surrounding neighborhoods. The intriguing factor of this common Summer event are the signs. Yard Sale signs come in all different forms, sizes, colors, materials and verbiage. Some people get pretty inventive, spray painting "YARD SALE" on the junk hood of a car and leaning it against a sign post or fashioning a sign out of a piece of cardboard with an arrow pointing in the general direction of the sale.

Some people have no concept of direction. The arrow on the handmade sign points into a clump of bushes or in such a general direction that the driver has a variety of options in which to take. You follow the arrow, follow the signs down a country road for miles until it just peters out. No yard sale in sight. Sometimes signs fall down or get stolen. Sometimes the sign maker just takes it for granted you will figure it out.

Once you get to these sales, they are typically in the persons yard. The whole damn family is usually there, but sometimes it is a good excuse for Papa to take the kids and go fishing. Men usually hate yard sales. Either that, or the wife wants to get rid of them because she is interested in actually selling something. Men always want to get tough on prices, often standing firm on a $20.00 item when his spouse would have easily settled on $10.00 or less, if nothing else to just get rid of the damn thing.

Yard sales take many forms. Garage sales, Moving sales, Porch sales, Backyard sales, Breezeway sales, Driveway sales and House sales come to mind. Anything catchy to get the attention of the passerby.

Bartering is part of the fun of yard sales. Bartering is an international sport. I've done it in the Philippines, in Mexico and in China. It's fun. My strategy in the fine art of Yard Sailing, is to wait until the late afternoon when yard sales are getting ready to wrap up. I walk up to the huge box of books, peruse them a bit and offer to buy the whole box for .....say $2.00.

Strategy?

The box didn't sell and they want to get rid of the crap. Most of the time it works.

After the yard sale closes, hubby comes home with the kids and the fight starts.....

"Whadda ya mean you sold my Skillsaw for $5.00?"

"Those waders were worth at least $50.00! Whadda ya mean there were holes in them? They can be patched ya know!"

"I was gonna use that bowling ball!"

Yard Sales. An American tradition. Did you know that your yard sale is not an OFFICIAL yard sale unless you are selling a fondue set? Some people don't realize this. You're not supposed to buy them. You go to the yard sale and look for the fondue set. If you can't find one.....LEAVE. They are kind of like parsley. You don't eat the parsley on your plate, now do you? Ergo, you don't buy a fondue set.

Well, the WEATHER STICK is pointing downwards so we are gonna get some rain. We need it. It's pretty crunchy here. Hope you all have a great weekend!

-Jeeem-

SIGN JIM'S DAMN GUESTMAP

Okay! For those of you who have tried and failed miserably to sign my guestmap, I have a link for you to use. Yeah, yeah, I know this is cheating but my philosophy in life is, "Whatever Works." The difficulty you all have had, seems to be a browser issue. It does not work with Netscape like AT ALL but seems to work with Internet Explorer alright. Still, some of you are having no luck at all so here is the link ------->

MY GUESTMAP

Hope that works for you. A grand total of like four or five people have signed the thing, including me. It's pretty cool cause you can make yourself a little people icon and place it where you are on this earth, as well as leave a message for all to see and also put your countries flag on it. Cool huh?

Sign away little campers!

-Jeeem-

THE MYSTERY OF DRIVING AMNESIA

Somehow I drove from home today and arrived at work. I don't remember driving to work though. I was somewhere else completely. I remember turning onto Meredith Center Road and I remember pulling into the parking lot at corrections, but I don't remember the rest. How the hell did I do that? It's actually kind of scary.

Where the hell was I?

Who was driving my truck?

Wow. Seriously, I drove twenty miles and only remember two tiny little bits of it.

I'm sure we've all done it. I know I've done it before but not for a long, long time. Every morning I maneuver through complicated traffic congestion and avoid stupid moves of other, less alert drivers to avoid a collision.

Less alert?

Hell, how "less alert" can you get than driving while in a different dimension? I don't even remember what I was doing or thinking about at the time. I just remember turning and arriving. Weird.

I'd love to hear other people's stories about this. No doubt it only occurs on well-travelled routes....or does it? Where do we go? Is there a zone out there where we all stop and have coffee? Can you imagine a meeting place on a different dimension where all us drivers go, sharing conversation and maybe having a Danish and watching ourselves drive to our destinations?

"Hey guys! I gotta go! I've arrived!" says Bob.

"Bye Bob! See ya again Tuesday!" the crowd shouts, raising their Danish and coffee in mock salute.

Holy smokes. What if I'm right? Perhaps this is gonna be some paradigm shift and I'll get the Nobel prize for my Driving Amnesia theory.

It could happen.

-Jeeem-

What to post, what to post....

The heat here has been almost unbearable lately. Lawns are crunchy yellow and plants, shrubs and trees are dying. It is a sad thing to witness and no rain is in the forecast. My weather stick has had a hard-on for quite a while now.

Weather stick you say?

Yes. I own a weather stick. I thought I told you guys about it, but in re-reading my posts, I don't see any reference to it. The folks up in Maine make em. These are simple little sticks that you tack to the side of your house and watch them move, according to the weather. Up = Happy weather Down = Unhappy weather

Actually, we could use some.....Down = Unhappy weather ....right now.

When the mercury rises, the tempers rise.

Hummmm.

Temperature (Latin temper¨¡t¨±ra = due measure)
Temper = To strengthen through experience or hardship.....To harden or strengthen (metal or glass) by application of heat or by heating and cooling.

From the Latin temper¨¢re time, season.

Interesting. Interesting to me because I have a temper and lately I've had to keep it in check. Why? you ask.....well, I used to say that stupid people piss me off, but lately I've amended that statement. Now I say, "Stupid people at least have an excuse." So, it's the "so-called" intelligent ones that DON'T have an excuse for opening their mouths and allowing CRAP to flow out.

Many people hide their true stupidity behind a mask of intelligence. They blather on and on and on about crap that makes no sense except in their own heads, which serves only to make themselves feel better. Kinda like self-recognition. They use big words, get political, use fill-in smoke screens and blather on and on.....essentially to accomplish saying something that they could reduce into a couple of sentences.

You have seen, heard and read them.

Finger pointers....passive-aggressive prejudice.....bell ringers.....blamers who hide behind their excuse of free speech to condemn whole countries and try and sound like they have a big fucking solution to world peace. They accomplish nothing but pointing their sissy little mamby-pamby fingers at any country of their choosing, typically the United States, because of our so-called WORLD POWER status. Well, I have news for you. No matter where you go in this world, some ivy league grease monkey is gonna point the finger at you. Perhaps you should move to the fucking MOON.

Hey, if you can't run with the big dogs, then get the fuck off the porch!

These socialite intellectuals have no common sense. They blather on for days and sometimes weeks about, "Poor me, poor me," and rarely, if ever, truly do anything about what they are actually bitching about. They point the finger at other cultures, blaming other cultures or countries for their woes and slamming everything in their path to the glee of their own pseudo-egos. These cry babies do not have the true mental capacity to count their own chickens. They blather on and on and on about their elite social circles and their scholastic achievements and lapse into pseudo-political-tirades that truly make little sense.

HUMILITY

I've discussed it before. True humility holds no prejudice. It does not take intelligence to get it or to hold onto it. In fact, intelligence often destroys it or gets in the way of it. The only way you get it, in my opinion, is experience. You don't get it by blaming others or pointing the fingers at whole countries or cultures, no matter who their leaders are. Perhaps you do if you have a little Adolf Hitler in you though.

Temper = To strengthen through experience or hardship.....

Some people just can't see the forest for the trees. They do not have the capacity to look beyond their own nose. If you don't have humility or have not tasted humility, then you don't have a freakin' clue what the hell it is!

Temper = To strengthen through experience or hardship.....

Prejudice, either to race or origin, equals stupidity. If you are not stupid and have an education, then you have no excuse and therefore, you are doubly stupid. There is too much hate in this world and too many people who, if they took the damn silver spoon out of their damn mouths and took a look around them, might learn a thing or two. There are so many narrow-minded people out there who jamb all Americans, Africans, Europeans, or Whoeverans into one big ball when they begin blathering on and on politically, oblivious to whom or whose feelings they might hurt.

Yes, I am educated. I didn't have the money or the grades or the luck to go to some fancy school but the schools I have attended dole out academia bull crap just as thick as the ivy league and pristine campuses of the elite. I've read scores of books, studied for hours, obtained degrees and paid thousands of dollars.

BUT

My best lessons in life were not taught in a classroom. They were taught through life experience. They were taught through pain. I did not learn humility in school. I got a good dose of it in life though and I'm still learning about it through life.

I once sat through an individual session with a kid who had killed his best friend in an automobile accident. He had been drinking, the weather was bad and speed was involved. The vehicle flipped over and his friend was killed. When I sat and talked to this kid, he had just served five years incarceration for the offense of vehicular homicide. He was just a kid. I liked him. I have since put some thought into what it was that I liked about him.

He was humble.

Ever hear that old saying, "Bad things happen to good people?"

He wasn't a whiner. He wasn't prejudiced. He didn't whine and go off on that pseudo-intellectual, mamby-pamby pity-pot that I've witnessed lately. He was grateful for what he had and he dreamed of goals he wanted to accomplish. I prematurely told him about a young woman I knew about, whom I thought had some humility, but I was sorely mistaken.

It's gonna be tough for him. He is a felon now. He cannot own a firearm. He cannot vote. He will struggle advancing in a job or even getting a job. Why? Because he's a loser?

No.

Because bad things happen to good people.

hu · mil · i · ty - Lack of vanity or self importance : modesty, humbleness, humility, meekness, unpretentiousness, self-effacement, reserve, restraint, constraint, lack of boastfulness, restrained behavior.

That's a hard word to live up to. I remember watching the TV series "KUNG FU" when I was a kid. I used to get frustrated at David Carradine when he would walk away from a fight (restraint). I'd be yelling at him from my living room, telling him to, "Kick his ass Grasshoppa!" But Grasshoppa never did, unless he was pushed to a limit where he had to protect himself or someone else. He remained modest and meek until he kicked the living daylights out of someone. I always wanted to see the bad guy get the crap kicked outta him so he'd learn a lesson to NOT MESS with humility.

Another thing that pisses me off is when good things happen to bad people. But, my belief....as irreligious as it may be, is that if you are bad or you are ungrateful for what you have in life, you will get yours....in the end. Some people call it Karma. I call it, "YOUR DUE." Sometimes "YOUR DUE" comes NOT in the form of punishment put simply in living a miserable, unhappy life.

What a way to go....

Am I targeting a particular individual in this blog posting? Well, you might say so.....but, if so, they know who they are and they may or may not get the message. I'm also making a general statement because this is not the first time this has happened. True intellectuals don't talk about their smarts. They don't have to.

Have a nice day!

-Jeeem-

Today I told the boss I was quitting work early and going home.

"Why?" he said.

"The heat" I said.

Then, somewhere along the way I got the bright idea to purchase an air conditioner. I think it was somewhere around the time it occurred to me that "home" was just as hot as "work" was. Today was not just hot, it was miserable. Sticky, exhausting, lumpy, slow heat. The kind that drains you quickly. So, I plucked out one of my few credit cards I haven't maxed and got on the phone to check the balance.

"Whoopie!" Enough to buy two air conditioners if I wanted! Cool! (no pun intended).

Problem was, EVERYBODY is sold out. EVERYONE. Wal-Mart has been sold out for a while. The Gilford store has four of them, but they are the GAZILLION Btu ones that make icicles form on your eyebrows and only plug into a 220 volt socket. Even the famous HOME DEPOT is out of them...all of the stores.

By the way, that is the first time I've been to a HOME DEPOT and I can see why the Tim the Toolman types love the place. Too much mass confusion for me though. Being home-fixer-upper dyslexic has something to say for itself. I think they have just about everything in that store.

LOUIE TO THE RESCUE!

After calling Louie to ask how many Btu his air conditioner was, he offered to sell me one. He has three of them.

Correction.....

Had three of them

So.....now I've got a six thousand Btu, remote control, super duper, refrigerated, cool air thingamajig that is just about the best purchase I've ever made. I can feel it on my back as I type this. Whew! What a relief. The thought crossed my mind to even bring the thing into work tomorrow. It's not really that heavy. We'll see.

Stay cool folks!

-Jeeem-

UGLY ITEMS


























The World's Most Deadly Feast?

The Asians are at it again. I'm telling you, ugly things are not supposed to be eaten! This one though.....well, let's just say the Asian folk had to be into the sake pretty good when they thought this one up. They call this exotic dish "FUGU."

Fugu is referred to as blow/globe/puffer fish since it blows its body up. The kanji (Chinese characters) used to write fugu indicates "river pig." In western Japan, fugu is called "fuku," which means "to blow" or "happiness."

River Pig huh? Oh yum!

There is an old expression such that "I want to eat fugu, but I don't want to die" in Japan.

Those Japanese and their expressions....

Since fugu's poison can lead to instantaneous deaths of diners, only licensed cooks are allowed to prepare fugu. You must have special skills and knowledge about fugu to be licensed. Poisonous parts of fugu differ, depending on the kind of fugu. Because of the strict regulations, the number of deaths is decreasing.

Whoooo boy, now there's good news!

Fugu dishes are usually expensive. One meal can cost $100 to $200 per person at a famous restaurant. But there are inexpensive fugu dishes (from $15 to $20) available at some restaurants.

No way José, if I'm going out, I'm going out in style!

It's said that the most poisonous fugu, "Tora-fugu," is the most delicious. Tora-fugu is expensive and can cost over one hundred dollars at a fish market.

Why NATURALLY, who would have thought otherwise?

Nowadays, prepared-fugu are sold at grocery stores and online stores, and fugu are eaten at Japanese homes. Fugu dishes are becoming more common than they used to be.

In China a family is limited to one child to control the population. In Japan......

-Jeeem-

OUR FIRST FIGHT



























Eve and I finally had our first argument. Yeah? "So what," you say? Well, I don't do anything conventional you know.....

Eve is 8204 miles away.

Anyway, it's not important that I won. Nobody's keeping score.

Yet...

-Jeeem-